I remember
as a young boy sitting in a sandbox being told, “If you dig long and
deep enough you can dig a hole to China.”I never made it to China that way, but I finally did make it to
Beijing by plane on the occasion of the 12th International
Olympiad in Informatics, the first IOI to be held on the continent of
Asia. The week long event, September 23-30, 2000, was packed with
excursions, entertainment, competitions, friendship, awards and, of
course, abundant Chinese food.Here
is my trip report along with selected pictures of the event.

We
arrived in Beijing with the Canadian team after a twelve hour flight from
Vancouver, British Columbia.Our
delegation had gathered in Vancouver from all parts of the United States.
Team Leader Rob Kolstad from Colorado Springs, Hal Burch from Pittsburgh,
Greg Galperin from Boston, and myself from Wisconsin. Team members Percy
Liang and John Danaher interrupted their freshman year at MIT for the
trip. Gregory Price from Thomas Jefferson HS of Science and Technology in
Alexandria, Virginia and Reid Barton from Arlington, Massachusetts rounded
out the USA team of four.

IOI Guides

Shortly
after arriving in Beijing, we walked through the sliding doors into the
welcoming signs of our Chinese IOI guides.In their red and black vests displaying the IOI 2000 logo, they
were easy to spot.

Their
first job was to greet us at the airport and get us safely transported by
bus to our hotels. The team members were dropped off at the CATIC Grand
Hotel and the delegation leaders went to the four star Continental Grand
Hotel. We had arrived at 3 pm in the afternoon a bit tired from the long
flight. It was very tempting to want to lie down for a short nap, but we
all resisted knowing it is best to suffer the sleep loss early in order to
adjust quickly to the 12 hour jet lag.

Summer Palace Excursion

We
awoke the next day ready for our first excursion. As is customary at IOI
events, several days of excursions had been planned for the week. Our
first trip was to the Summer Palace, a huge park in the northern part of
Beijing that was the summer home for royalty for nearly 800 years.It had been restored after being destroyed in 1900 during the Boxer
Rebellion. Our tour guide led us through this crowded park, which is both
a favorite tourist attraction and a popular retreat for Beijingers. The
huge Kunming Lake within the park was built completely by manual labor. A
popular activity is to take a dragon boat ride on the lake.

Another
attraction is the world famous 728 meter-long corridor that is decorated
with 8,000 paintings.

Opening Ceremonies

The
opening ceremonies were held in the Beijing International Convention Hall.
Mrs. Chen Zhili from the Ministry of Education, delivered the opening
address in Mandarin Chinese followed by an English translation.

For
entertainment we were treated to a number of outstanding performances
featuring acrobats,

musicians,

and a
troop from the Beijing Opera.

Afterwards,
all 512 guests including 276 contestants from 75 countries filed into a reception hall to try their hand with chop sticks as they sampled
dishes from an elaborate Chinese buffet.Zide
Du, chairman of the organizing committee from China, was happy to see that
his long hours of hard work had finally paid off and IOI 2000 was
officially underway. His daughter was on hand to join in the festivities.

General Assembly

That
evening the delegation leaders met to choose the problems for the first
competition day. The problems were presented by the scientific committee

and
accepted unanimously on the first vote.

This
happens so infrequently that the general assembly gave the scientific
committee a round of applause. It is not easy to get approval of the first
try from all countries.

Now
the only thing left for many countries was translating the problems into
their native language. Our delegation was fortunate and skipped this time
consuming task since the official language of the IOI is English and all
contestants receive a copy in English.

Early
the next morning, the contestants began the first of two five-hour
competitions. This gave the delegation leaders a break, and many headed
back to their room for some sleep after an all night translations session.
After the contestants had finished programming their solutions to the
three problems, it was time to begin the grading process. Using an
automated system, the work of grading the contestants programs was
dramatically reduced.Differences
in program performance were detected by running a series of test cases
against each program and checking for speed and accuracy.After all the programs were tested, the results were made available
to each contestant, along with the test cases . This gave the contestants
the opportunity to double check the grading process using their own
computers. Our team was pleased with the first day’s results.

Second Excursion

Between
competition days we were treated to an excursion to the heart of
Beijing, beginning with the Forbidden City. This was the
seat of imperial power during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). It has been written, “Without
seeing the magnificence of the royal palace, one can never sense the
dignity of the emperor.” We were given lots of opportunity to wander
around the beautiful courtyards and inside the buildings. It reminded me of scenes from the motion picture, The Last Emperor.

Our
next stop was Tienneman Square which was decorated with imported flowers
for the October 1st celebration of the founding of the People's
Republic of China. Our team got in the spirit of the occasion by waving the red flag
and Mao’s little red book, which were always available from obliging
vendors.

Kim
Schrijvers, the team leader from the Netherlands, was able to quickly
round up over 100 unsuspecting IOI participants for his “spontaneous”
group photo on the square.

Second Competition Day

The
second day was pretty much a carbon copy of the first competition day with the
exception that the problems presented were a bit harder and arriving at an
agreement on them took a bit longer. All in all it appeared that the
creation of the International Scientific Committee had been a good idea
since their work was very helpful to the Chinese Scientific Committee in
selecting and testing out the competition problems. The final distribution
of scores in the competition also confirmed that the problems were at the
proper level of difficulty for a good distribution of scores. Now the
guessing game began by the delegations as they wondered if their scores
were high enough to get bronze, silver, or gold medals.

Following
the last day of competition, we headed out in buses to the
Chinese acrobatic show. This was a highly entertaining show featuringyoung children who could balance on just about anything and make it
look easy. One boy was able to do a one handed hand stand on the head of
another boy standing up.

Another
young girl constructed a tower of furniture supported below by a companion
and managed to balance on the very top of a stack at least 30 feet high in
the air.

The Great Wall

The
highlight of this day was a trip to the Great Wall of China, one of the
great wonders of the world. This 2,000 year old structure, stretching for
4,500 miles stands today as a symbol of Chinese ingenuity and willpower.

At one
time every fourth person in China worked on the wall. It’s a steep climb
in some places to even walk on the wall since it goes straight up a
mountain instead of taking the more gentle contour. After we had walked and
climbed about as far as our tired legs could carry us, we returned to an
outpost tower on the wall for a fully catered banquet. Chairs and tables
had been hand carried onto the wall along with all of the dishes, glasses,
and food for this spectacular occasion. As we sat together eating our
meal, watching the sun set in the west and the lights come on illuminating
the Great Wall, it was hard to believe this was really happening. A few of
those at our table looked at each other and shook our heads, “This is
truly unforgettable.”

Closing Ceremonies

Based
on everything that I had already seen this week, and everything I had been
told about Chinese ceremonies, I was expecting a grand finale. I was not
disappointed. It began with video highlights of the week's activities,
featuring scenes projected on large overhead screens within the
convention hall. Official dignitaries from China occupied a special
position in the first row. After a series of elaborate stage performances and speeches, it was time for the
medals to be awarded. As is
customary, only half of the participating students were awarded medals.
Sixty nine bronze medals were handed out individually to the winners.
Gregory Price from our team won the bronze medal.

Forty seven silver
medals were awarded, and two of them went to team members Percy Liang and John
Danaher.

The coveted gold medal was reserved for the top twenty-three
participants, and Reid Barton got one of them. This was the second gold medal
this year for Reid at an International Olympiad. He was awarded a gold
medal at the Mathematics Olympiad held in Korea earlier in July.

Special
recognition went to Jing Xu of China for being the best female contestant at the
Olympiad. Only six of the 276 participants were women. A perfect score was
recorded by one contestant, Mikhail Baoutine, from the Russian Federation.
He was awarded the winner’s trophy, a gold medal, and a laptop computer.

All three of his team mates also won gold medals, making this the first
time in IOI history that one country has won four gold medals.

Final Banquet

That evening we were
bused to the Red Rooster Theater & Restaurant in downtown Beijing
where our party of over 500 was served a marvelous Chinese meal by waiters
and waitresses on roller skates.It
always amazed me how quickly every sit down dinner in China was served, no
matter what the size of the party. There was never any waiting time that one
would expect when feeding so many people all at once. The number of good
service people in restaurants and shopping centers was one of the many
things that astounded me about China. And the tall, slender, dancing and
singing models decked out in alluring attire who entertained us that night
was another. It was the Beijing version of a Las Vegas chorus line.

New Environments

Starting
in 2001, the computing environment will include LINUX with the GNU C/C++and the Free Pascal compilers. This will allow for more interesting
problems and really speed up the grading processThis was adopted by the General Assembly on the recommendation made
by our head coach, Rob Kolstad, in a presentation to the group.

Memorable IOI

After
such an elaborate IOI in China, our delegation agreed that we had
underestimated the amount of work that it takes to put on an event of this
magnitude. This is a concern, because we are hosting the IOI in 2003.Hopefully, memories will have faded by then and our guests will
forgive us for not having a branch of the Great Wall anywhere near Chicago. Thankfully, the
torch was passed to Finland who will host the 2001 IOI in Tampere.

Thank
you Zide Du and the entire Chinese organization for making the first IOI of
the 21st century such a memorable one.

Post Script

Being
a member of the International Committee of the IOI has afforded me the
opportunity to visit many parts of the world I would probably never have
seen.
This year’s trip to China, was especially interesting to me, since it was
my first visit to Asia. I took lots of digital photographs beyond the ones
shown here. The complete set can be viewed with Internet Explorer at www.zing.com.
When you reach Zing.com. search under Albums for IOI 2000. All of the
pictures stored at Zing.com are 50 times as big as the jpegs shown here.
It is possible to order prints from Zing or download the files and make
your own.